The charities I choose for this assignment were So Others Might Eat (SOME) and St. Martin of Tours Food Pantry.
Firstly, I will talk about St. Martin's. This is a place I have worked at for about 4 years now. Every Monday that I am able to I go and help out. The work they do is impressive to say the least. On average they feed well over 150 families each week, oftentimes the number is close to 200. They rely totally on volunteers and donations yet somehow are almost always able to feed everyone. Only on very rare occasions were they out of food, and even then one of the volunteers went out and bought some for the remaining people. That's just how everyone who works there is. They are some of the nicest and friendliest people I have ever met, and are able to put up with an amazing amount of crap from the clients who come there.
The second charity is SOME. SOME is one of the best non profit groups I have ever seen. They not only feed those who can't afford a meal, they do whatever they can to change that. They provide cheap housing in an area (DC) where housing is RIDICOUSLY expensive. They provide basic job training to give people the skills they need to make it on their own. If you ever get a chance to see the impact they make it really is amazing.
The reason I choose these two charities is they address, in my opinion, one of the greatest problems around- hunger. The US alone produces enough food to feed the entire planet, yet for some reason there are millions of people who are unable to get 2 solid meals a day. I don't understand how it is so difficult to make sure everyone is fed considering the insane amount of surplus the world produces. Food is one of the most basic needs, if people actually worked to fix this glaring problem a lot of other ones would stop. If someone is starving they will kill or steal to get food. Eliminate hunger and you eliminate a large portion of crime. Eliminate hunger and you eliminate a large amount of illness caused by malnutrition. So much suffering could be stopped if humanity stopped worrying about trivial things and focus on keeping everyone fed.
